


I wrote this thing on a DARE

by catalli



Category: Original Work
Genre: Driders, F/F, Human/Monster Romance, Online Dating, Recreational Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-21
Updated: 2020-10-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 02:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,302
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27136394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/catalli/pseuds/catalli
Summary: A computational linguistics grad student in a world that has newly discovered workable travel between the material world and a multiverse of eldritch realms drops acid, the cheaper form of dimensional travel. Her goal? Meet her Tinder date, a bad-trip-entity-fractal-tarantula, but, like, y'know, cute and a drider. They are gay.
Relationships: Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Kudos: 8





	I wrote this thing on a DARE

The fibers are defined more by how things—Troy's gotten up and walked off to the sink, or so have a series of figures, weaving and—his _face_ , what happened to his face, what happened to his face what happened

He's back. You can't read his face. Kelly and Halil are two clusters of shifting fibers on the couch, the empty beer bottles on the coffee table almost corporeal. Troy has two glasses. Puts one in your hand and you feel the shaky pull of tendons under your skin as your fingers move. Water, cold, sip. Kelly says something. Halil laughs. She laughs. Is it at you of course it's at you. Ride it out. Troy nudges your hand with the cold thing in it. Water, sip, too cold. Loud, too loud, loud, too loud, "Loud, too loud," you say. The warped melodies of Zeki Müren squeeze your eyeballs. Ride it out. " _Ayten_." Behind you, echoing. You can make out his head nodding towards the balcony when you turn, his hand weaving into a gesture towards it. The cool night air speaks of endings when you slide open the door. Typical. Ride it out. The little shivers you get from stepping barefoot onto the cold tiles subside and your mind's eye slips free. Your hands aren't quite coordinated with it as you play out the little gestures, mnemonics for a conceptual transform. Good enough. Find the seams in the space before you, pick at them, reweave. Pick, reweave. Pick, direct, open.

The world is torn apart and the tatters are stitched into an iridescent cacophony of stained glass. The laughter from a while ago is still echoing in your head. It bounces once, twice, folds in on itself until it's a high-pitched overlay of staccatos. You feel a light gust of wind as the source of the noise flies past you. The bird makes another call, another flap of its wings, and disintegrates into a flock of smaller birds. Some of them disappear, some come to rest on an unseen branch, their legs half-shifted in another spatial dimension to perch upon it. All is quiet, except for the shimmering, which has never stopped. You make no attempt to think of what you are standing on. You do not fall. It takes time to recall arriving at the table you are seated at. Nobody is seated at the table to your left, where the loudest part of the background chatter seems to be coming from. Your watch says she's late. She is, but only slightly.

She does not form out of the fibers, but rather crawls in from the distance on a sheet of them. Wearing the same denim jacket she was in her photo on the app. She hasn't spotted you. It _is_ rather crowded, your mind's just edited most of it out. You're grateful it's adjusted, after the sensory overloads the first couple of times you did this. Wave? Wave. She blinks and turns to you. It takes eight-no, sixteen-no, thirty-two-well, depends on which joint you start counting at-times the steps it would ordinarily take for her to get to your table.

"SorryI'mlateI've never gone the way here and, uh," she fumbles with the chair a bit before sitting on it in a way that you are sure is impossible, "oh yeah, I still need to rework that sleeve..."

"Oh, wait, I'm so sorry this cut into work for you! If you want, we—"

"No, it's fine, it's fine," Claire says. "Uhhh, so, how was your day?"

"Fine, I guess. There was a write-up for something I was working on that I polished up a bit, but it's an uncharacteristically slow weekend. I met up with some old friends and we were at the tail end of a party when I left for here, actually." You hope nobody in the apartment is too worried.

"Oh, wait, what was the thing you were working on? You said you're a computational linguistics grad student in your profile?"

"Uh, my current project's just doing some modeling on what happens when you drop a couple of agents in a void and see how they start talking to each other. Someone who did this before us observed some patterns to how this happened and conjectured some stuff, I managed to prove some of it. Probably sounds a bit boring."

"Wait, no, that sounds... neat? Like language is all-"she's leaning forward a bit, her chin resting on one hand while the other continues to gesticulate in time to words you can't parse"-when you think about it, and I mean I know you've grown up with it and it's probably normal to you but it's pretty novel to me." Is the rhythm of her speech (speech?) inherent or is your brain generating that while it translates? All eight of her eyes have what looks like eight more within them, and all seem focused on a point right above your shoulder. "...What's an 'agent,' like in the context of your project?" she asks.

"Just, think a simplified model of a person."

"Ah, neat." There is a small pause before she speaks again. "I like your blouse." Her eyes shift to meet yours and then immediately look away. The movement is only noticeable because it's multiplied so many times.

"Thanks." You're both blushing a little bit. How do conversations-oh, right. "Your t-shirt looks cool. Is that a band?" you say. The graphic on the front looks like a block of static at first glance, but there's a very subtle image of a sunflower imprinted on it.

"Oh yeah, Alphabet Mafia. They're really cool, like, undid-my-burnout-on-noisy-stuff cool. I read about them from a forum thread I clicked through, a couple months post-breach? First night after the place I stay got linked up for Materium-side network access."

"I never really listened to noise music. What do they sound like?"

"I have one of their songs on my phone, if you give me jus-" She pauses as she too registers the presence to your right. Querying. You turn in what you hope is the right direction and unfocus your eyes. The mental gymnastics you need to order plain coffee and communicate the number for the prepaid you prepped for trips take a bit of concentration. Claire seems to have an easier time with the ordering. "Anyway, here it is," she says as she places the phone by you on the table. You listen.

"...Well, they sound pretty...unique," you manage. Given the arrhythmic quality of the whole thing, it's surprising she's somehow bobbing her head in time with it.

"It's fine, I mean not everyone enjoys it," she says as she pauses the music, grabs her cappucino and takes a sip. You notice the presence of your coffee. Warm, gulp.

"So, how's tailoring? You said you were working on a sleeve?"

"Oh yeah, that. As it turns out, there's a lot of people Materium-side willing to commission tailored spider-silk clothes and pay shipping, so I'm a lot busier than usual. Still trying to figure out ways to streamline my workflow."

"The stuff you make _does_ sound pretty cool. How'd you get into it?"

"So, like, everyone in my family fishes for a living, and it's honest work, and not too hard when you can make your own nets, but the same hex-spiral over and over again gets boring. I started doing some experimenting with various structures on the side, got good enough at it."

"Family give you a hard time about it?"

"Nah, they think it's weird but I have four clutchmates who are perfectly happy sticking to the family business. Haven't really spoken to anyone in my family often what with the rush of getting set up and then the sudden uptick in business, but we're on okay terms. How's your family?"

"Distant. I moved from Turkey to the US for grad school a year and a half ago and only ended up visiting home once. I give them a call every once in a while so my mom doesn't get worried, but eehhh, it doesn't feel like we have much to talk about. They don't know I'm gay, and I couldn't figure out how they'd react enough to tell them all through college. Sure as hell can't now."

"Ah, that sounds a bit rough."

"Nah, It's fine, and hey, I need to look on the bright side of things: They've stopped asking me if I've gotten a boyfriend yet!" You force a chuckle. She forces a somewhat pained smile. Ah. Change the subject. "Have you been reading anything you like lately? It's been so long since I read anything that wasn't a paper and I have a tiny bit more free time than usual."

"I recommend this to basically everyone but you should really check out _Arugula Sunshine_ by-"you parse no sound but a series of symbols etch themselves in your memory"-it sometimes can't decide if it's halfway between YA and a regular thriller but I absolutely love their work and it's a great introduction. They do fractal narratives so well! Oh wait, uh, you might want to check if it's hazardous to you first."

"Fractal narr-hazardous? Now I'm interested."

"Oh I mean at the level of the actual plot it's just stories within stories that follow the structure of an arc themselves. The actual thing is it extends in the other direction as well, sort of? If you read at the correct pace the embedded memes influence you to vaguely follow a subplot of a subplot in your day-to-day life. Not all of them are tested for human-safety, though."

"Wow, that sounds scary as all hell. Interesting, though."

"The actual subplots that get enacted _are_ like, in the neighborhood of weird-conversation-that-goes-nowhere-and-has-no-lasting-effect-on-the-rest-of-your-life, though. The real problem is the possibility of 'oh no a human got exposed to things they were not meant to know when they read our book and now they're seeing crabs appearing out of nowhere.'"

"Did that actually happen?"

"It's definitely a story I heard but it's pre-breach, and stuff you hear about most older incidental contacts is hard to verify, given that trip reports are rather recent in the grand scheme of things."

"Okay, do you have anything that's guaranteed not to carcinize my eyes?" God, that's not even a good rhyme.

"...You know, that's a good question. I haven't read any novels I _know_ are vetted for non-memeticity, except _Fictions_ by Borges, but that's, well, human-written. Still liked it though, would recommend reading with an eye to skip if a given story isn't fun."

"Ooh, I've been meaning to get around to reading that." You take another gulp of coffee. "What else do you like to do for fun?"

"Water-skeeting. Growing up on a coast and all I did it a lot as part of work when I was younger, but it's fun on its own as well. Pretty ideal for sightseeing."

"What kind of fishing involves water-skiing?"

" _Skeeting_. See, unless I make a real effort to let it through, water kind of just...gives up on rising past the tips of my legs. Doesn't know how to deal with fractals and can't think non-locally, around anywhere I've been at least." She makes and breaks eye contact, again, and her mouth is opens nearly a second before she asks, "Want to come with, sometime the week after? I know a nice spot and a place that rents kayaks for super cheap."

"Oh. Uh, yeah." You're both blushing again.

"...Do you want my number, to plan things over a non-garbage messaging platform?"

"That makes sense." She tells you her number, you commit it to memory, and give her yours in turn. "So, text you?"

"Yup, text you. See you in two weeks, I guess!"

You finish the last of your coffee, wave, and let go. It feels like relaxing a muscle you didn't realize you were tensing this whole time.

The cold hits you as your nerves reconnect. Your eyes itch when you blink and look up and the moon is brighter and crisper than it ever is. Comedown. You uncurl and stand up. Troy is to your right. He thumbs something on his phone and looks up at you.

"Five minutes, starting from when I saw the umbilical come out of the rift," he says, turning the screen with the stopwatch on it towards you. "So, how'd the date go?"

You pair a small, noncommittal smile with a small, noncommittal nod. Speech isn't quite there yet.

"Well, I'm glad you had a better time than you seemed to be having before."

You can squeeze thoughts into words again. "What do you, mean?"

"Like, just saying, you definitely looked like you were having the beginnings of a panic attack back inside there. Hope it was worth it."

"You're, my friend not my mom, and, besides, it was just a bad coincidence. Turkish Student Association said they were having this party today, announced the day of, Halil in town for the first time in forever so I'd feel bad if I didn't say hello..."

"Aren't there alternatives? Trip-sitting isn't much trouble for me, but-"

"The alternatives are expensive as hell. Acid's reasonable given my stipend even now, and I went and bought a whole blotter pretty early on because it was cheap after they decrim-"

"Sunk cost fallacy much? You could, y'know, have actual good trips and do more commuting after you save up a bit?"

It's sensible. This is dangerous. Your HPPD's bad as ever. The paranoia before each hop is even worse. You want to do it again. Claire's phone number is still crystal clear in your memory as you slide open the balcony door. You turn to Troy before you both go in. "So, are you free again in two weeks?"


End file.
